Music-Games: Supporting New Opportunities for Music Education

The digital revolution is creating new ways to engage with music, transforming music-making opportunities in the classroom and wider musical environment. The challenge for music educators is to capitalise on the evident motivation for informal music-making with digital technology, as a tool to create new opportunities to inspire and engage learners with music in educational contexts. This project will investigate the potential of music-games to inspire and engage learners with music, developing theoretical and practical knowledge to support and enrich authentic and inclusive classroom participation in line with defined curriculum goals. Music-games present a highly pervasive new digital platform to create, perform, appreciate and transmit music through peer and online communities, and one of the biggest selling video game genres. Previous research highlights the power of music participation to enrich cognitive, social and emotional wellbeing, while a growing body of work highlights the educational potential of digital games to scaffold and enrich personalised learning across the curriculum. However the music-game synergy has been neglected by research, presenting a platform to investigate the processes, experiences, educational opportunities and potential outcomes of both music participation and digital game participation in one context. The aims of the project will be achieved by completing the following main objectives:1. Develop recommendations and materials to guide educators on effective and innovative employment of music-games in the classroom, and guide industry on enhanced design of educationally appropriate future music-games.2. Develop and investigate a co-created scenario of music-making with music-games in the classroom, identifying processes of participation and music-game features which support engaging, authentic and inclusive experience.3. Develop two theoretically informed models: a model of Music-Game Flow, and a model of the potential educational opportunities and outcomes with music-games, by integrating the collective data from the contextual enquiry and the empirical investigation with theoretical insight.The project objectives will be achieved through four stages of work. Stage 1 involves a comprehensive stakeholder enquiry (Educator, Learner and Games Industry) to establish attitudes, uses and requirements with music-games, and generate user-driven scenarios of use for music-games as a tool to support music-education. Stage 2 involves the comprehensive generation and empirical investigation of a music-making scenario with Guitar Hero 5 in situ of the classroom as an authentic and inclusive learning context. Stage 3 involves evaluation of the collective results to develop and refine recommendations for educators and industry on effective and innovation employment and design of music-games. Further, Stage 3 involves the development of two theoretically informed models: a model of Music-Game Flow, and a model of the potential educational opportunities and outcomes with music-games. This will be achieved by integrating the collective data from Stage 1's stakeholder enquiry and Stage 2's empirical investigation, with theoretical insight. Stage 4 involves the dissemination of the findings through cross-disciplinary national and international peer reviewed publication, conference presentation, organised research colloquiums, proposed edited text, and public awareness events.In conclusion, this project aims to develop greater theoretical and practical understanding of the potential of music-games to engage learners with music, identifying processes and factors that shape and constrain authentic and inclusive music-making in line with curriculum goals.

The proposed project of work will benefit both wellbeing and economy for the UK and beyond, in it's aim to better understand the potential of music-games to inspire and engage learners with music. The developed practical and theoretical knowledge will guide industry, institutions and the public on effective and innovative use, design and evaluation of music-games to promote personal and scholastic wellbeing and economic edge. The work will be disseminated to maximise impact and beneficiaries reached, through Guidance Documents, publication and public awareness events. Industry Music-games are a critical sales and development area for the current and future games industry, and burgeoning new distribution and marketing channel for the music industry. The proposed work will foster economic performance and competitiveness of the games industry by informing enhanced design of future music-games and peripheries to enhance creative and expressive potential, increase authenticity of experience and educationally appropriate guidance, and new areas of marketing and distribution. For the music industry, the body of work will inform on the impact of games on music consumption and behaviour, deepening understanding of music-games as a new distribution channel for music, and platform for creation and transmission of new intellectual property. The proposed body of work will support UK industry in benefiting from research to maintain a creative and competitive edge in designing for optimal user performance, experience and wellbeing. Educators The proposed body of work will positively impact quality of life and opportunity for creative output, potentially influencing music educational policy, pedagogy and practice. Greater theoretical and practical knowledge of educational and opportunities and outcomes of music-games will contribute to advancing models of music education to account for the rapid technological and social changes in the learners wider musical landscape, in line with defined curriculum goals. Further, enhanced authenticity and inclusivity of music education will help more people to benefit from the positive effects of music participation and game-based learning, including social, cognitive and emotion wellbeing, and the development of personal, learning and thinking skills. Dissemination The project aims to transfer evidence-based practice to bridge the gap between academia, industry and the public, raising awareness of importance of engagement with music and digital technology to personal and scholastic development. Guidance Documents will be developed for industry and educators. The Industry Guidance Document will extensively detail strategies for enhanced future music-game design and evaluation, and the formulation of educationally appropriate supporting materials. The Educator Guidance Document will extensively detail strategies for appropriate, effective and innovate ways to inspire and engage learners with music-games to support development of creativity, identity and personal, learning and thinking skills. The findings will be communicated to beneficiaries through national and international cross-disciplinary industry and education conferences, peer reviewed publications in areas of Education studies, Psychology of Music and Game-based Learning , and research colloquiums to which industry, education and community representatives will be invited. Further, the principle investigator aims to publically disseminate project findings in the public sector including arranging/contributing to public awareness events at which she is an experienced speaker, including the Dana Centre (British Science Museum), YRock schools and communities, and Guerrilla Science at music festivals. This project will support future grant applications and collaborations to research, design, develop, and evaluate new music-games and interfaces for music-participation.